Release timetables in Agile Environments

Question

Hello,

We are currently utilising an agile environment in work. One of my tasks involve setting up a release timetable. A part of this is providing a time frame of how long a project would take to go from a development environment, to staging and then live.

I have conflicting thoughts regarding whether such a timetable needs to be done.

For a start, we are quickly moving into a Continuous Integration / Constant Delivery environment where an application is tested amongst all environments when a change is made to the code base. Therefore, there is no time frame, but things should be "just" deployable. (Well, we always need a little bit of contingency as the best laid plans can always go awry)

Can anyone steer my in the right direction on what would be the best way to handle such time tables and timeframes if needed in Release Management in an Agile Product Development Environment.

Regards,

Steve

Answer 1

I usually maintain a release plan for the management that is mainly based on a combination of the estimated & prioritized user stories (I group them to match a main new feature of the product) and velocity.

With a well maintained product backlog it's pretty easy to do your release plan. I usually plan three to four releases a year.

What I like with Scrum is that I can potentially release after each iterations.

If you want to master your release management, you will need more information that few answers of practionners. I highly suggest you this book.

Answer 2

If you currently utilising and agile environment you should check Agile estimating and Planning book for some suggestions. This book also contains small chapter about Release planning.

Some release planning should be always done. Release is a target wich usually covers 3-12 months of development = set of iterations. It something which describes target criteria for project to success. It is usually described as combination of expected features and some date. Features in this case are usually not directly user stories but epics or whole themes because you don't know all user stories several months ahead. Personally, I think release is something that says when the project based on vision can be delivered. It takes high level expectations and constraints from the vision and converts them to some estimation. You can also divide project to several releases.

But remember that three forces works in agile as well. There is direct relation among Feature set, Release date and Resources (+ sometimes also mentioned fourth force: Quality). Pushing one of these forces always move others. It is usually modelled as equilateral triangle (or square).

There are different approaches to plan a release. One is mentioned in the book. It is based on user stories estimation, iteration length selection and velocity estimation but I'm little bit sceptic to this approach because you don't have simple user stories for whole release and estimating epics and themes is inaccurate. On the other hand high level feature definition is exactly what you need for three forces. If you don't have enough time you will implement only basic features from all themes. If you have more time you will implement more advanced features. This is task for product owner to correctly set business priority when dividing epics and themes into small user stories.

The most important part in agile is that you will know more quite soon. After each iteration you will have better knowledge of your velocity and you will also reestimate some planned user stories. For this reason I think the real estimate (accurate) and realease date should be planned after few iterations. As I was told on one training effort should not be estimated, effort should be measured. If anybody complains about it show him Waterfall and ask him when will he get relatively accurate estimate? Hint: Hardly before end of analysis wich should be say after 30% of the project.

It is also important what type of projects do you want to implement using agile / scrum and how long will project be. Some projects are strictly budget or date driven others can be more feature driven. This can affect your release planning. For short projects you usually have small user stories and you can provide much more accurate estimate at the beginning.

Answer 3

Can anyone steer my in the right direction on what would be the best way to handle such time tables and timeframes if needed in Release Management in an Agile Product Development Environment.

First of all the Scrum Framework guidelines never guides you to not have a Release Plan or Time table ever. What is leading you to have conflicting thoughts? I would like to know the source which is leading you to this conflict.

Best way to create a Release Plan is like this (this may take a week or so depending on the size of your project):

1. Get the Stakeholders in a room and get a EPIC user story written on the board using their guidance. The EPIC user story should include the end product vision. (ignore if already done)

2. List out the type of users.(ignore if already done)

3. Break the Epic user story into smaller and smaller chunks of user stories till they are small enough to be doable in sprints.(ignore if already done)

4. Ask the Product Owner(s) of the Scrum Team(s) to prioritize the stories in the uncommitted backlog list(s) Also do some form of effort estimation fairly quickly and do not waste a lot of time estimating.

5. Get the target end date or Go Live date of the project from Stakeholders.

6. Divide the time frame from now until the end date into Releases. Ask the stakeholders which features need to be delivered by when and include the appropriate user stories in them, and call them Releases. You can also give those Releases themes if needed.

The Release Plan now is conceptualized. After this draw it on a white board or put it in a visible and transparent location where everyone can see it - add user story cards to the appropriate release.

Now your initial release plan should be ready

Ideas for implementation:

1. Form a Scrum Team specifically for Operations Activities. They could follow Scrum or Kanban would be better.

2. As and when Development teams get "shippable products" put in the shelf, the Operations Kanaban Team can do the deployment and release branching etc tasks as per the Release Plan.

So this way the development Teams don't really focus on the Release plan or work, just the Operations Team does that. The Development Team just focussed on the Sprint Work, it would be the Product Owners headache to make sure the right user stories are in the right Release and in the right order. The direction would be given by the Stakeholders.

To be honest you really don't have to do anything yourself, it's all in the stakeholders and POs hand, I don't know where is is the fuss??

I hope you get the picture.

Answer 4

This is a very loaded question, and depends on your company to be sure. I first have to ask, why are you using 3 environments and continuous integration (your reason matters)? Are you performing automated tests at all? How are your code branches setup? Do you release for some functionality, or just routine maintenance fixes?

Answering these will give you an idea of why you need a release, and how you should go about it.

For example, if you only have a staging environment for the purpose of integration and perform automated tests, then can't having a separate code branch in which continuous integration tests run be sufficient?

If staging is to perform some sort of user acceptance, does your company have a dedicated testing team or are they members of the agile teams?

As you correctly stated, if the code is always integrated and tested, then why would you need a timetable and moving from environment to environment unless you were unsure about the actual "done" condition of the features? By that, I mean that it's not that you're unsure that the feature was coded correctly, but are you worried it will introduce other bugs? Will it integrate well with code already in production? Address the concerns at the root of the problem. Don't just do it because you think you're supposed to have X environments or testing should be in another group. Maybe the solutions to those problems may be to adjust the definition of "done" accordingly.

As you can see there are many, many factors that will make your organization unique. There is no one right way to answer this, just tradeoffs that you are willing to accept.

I find that having multiple environments with teams of people working at the various layers tends to be anti-agile and counterproductive. The best bet is to analyze your concerns, and try to find ways to solve them (such as expanding the definition of "done", or breaking up the various organizations and putting them on the teams, eliminating as many environments as possible and simplifying the process, etc). That may not be possible in your organization, so you may have to live with tradeoffs.